Fringe preview: Kai Humphries

TWO stand-ups sharing a flat. It sounds like the perfect set up for a TV sitcom.

In the case of comedian Kai Humphries, however, such a flatshare is much more closer to home – he shares with Daniel Sloss.

It could be a match made in heaven, or marriage made in hell. As he brings his new show In Full Colour to the Gilded Balloon this month, he reflects on living with his fellow funnyman.

“I live with comedian Daniel Sloss, who I also tour with for three months of the year.

“On tour we spend every hour together, we travel together, dine together, stay at the same hotels and of course, work at the same venues.

“To say we’re like a married couple would be exaggerating the pressures of marriage – at least when you’re married you get to have some personal space when you go to work, do the gardening or walk the dog.

“You might therefore expect the conversation between us to run dry, but no, it runs stupid.

“We have a house rule, in which any joke that comes into your head has to be spoken out loud.

“Usually as a comedian you have a filter that only allows you to air the good stuff, but with the ‘I thought it, so I said it’ policy, the chat between us is sometimes so treacherously unfunny it becomes funny again.

“A fantastic feature in our house is ‘the passive aggressive whiteboard’ in the kitchen.

“Every shared household should have one.

“If there’s a half-eaten bowl of cereal left to deal with in the sink, or someone is hoarding towels, we butcher each other on the whiteboard with over-the-top doses of sarcasm addressing the problem.

“We have a heavy one-upmanship rivalry, which once resulted in me snogging his mother during a live performance in front of him and his dad, while the audience serenaded us.

“While I was busy thinking I’d won that little duel, Daniel sponsored one of my live club events, where the sponsor has their brand logo projected onto the big screen.

“He used his advertising space to display his made-up brand ‘Team Smug’ . . . the logo was a photo of him snogging my girlfriend while she wore a Chelsea top (his team, not mine) with his name on the back.”